Every 7 minutes on average, a crash causes death, injury or significant damage on Long Island.

Cars playing cat and mouse on the Southern State Parkway.

Motorists regularly pushing 90 mph on the Long Island Expressway.

Drivers casually blowing through stop signs and hitting excessive speeds in residential neighborhoods.

On Long Island roadways, crashes that lead to serious injuries or death often do not involve a singular cause.

Sometimes drugs or alcohol are at play. Other times, it's the weather or motorists driving aggressively or while distracted.

But one thread connecting the bulk of the most serious crashes on Long Island is speed.

"People don't realize just how dangerous speeding is and how much they're increasing the risks of having an accident by routinely speeding," said Stuart Cameron, a former chief of the Suffolk County Police Department. "They need to just slow down…Probably the most dangerous thing that people do on Long Island is to drive their cars."

Robert Brodsky and Michael O'Keeffe report in NEWSDAY that from enhanced driver education and beefed-up enforcement to lowered speed limits and improved road designs, experts contend there are a multitude of ways to reduce Long Islanders' need for speed.

But in a region where most of its 3 million residents use a vehicle to get to work or school or to navigate their daily lives, Long Islanders' desire to quickly get where they're going has made the roads increasingly dangerous, according to data analyzed by Newsday and interviews with more than a dozen traffic safety experts, law enforcement officials and victims of speed-related crashes.

On Long Island, 65 people were killed in 2024 in crashes where police determined that speed was a contributing factor, up from 51 such fatalities in 2019, according to data from the Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research in Albany. Across Long Island, speed was a factor in more than 35% of all fatal crashes in 2024, the data shows.

Meanwhile, crashes involving serious injuries spiked to a 10-year high in 2024, at 353, according to Institute data.

"Speeding is avoidable — it is dangerous, and it can be deadly," Transportation Department spokesman Stephen Canzoneri said. "There is no question that speeding makes crashes worse on Long Island and across New York State."

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Long Island school districts would see an increase of 3.8% in state aid under New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal, which would allocate $200 million more to the region’s schools in 2026-27, a Newsday analysis found.

The proposed aid package for Long Island schools totals nearly $5.5 billion, according to aid projection figures released yesterday.

If approved by the state legislature, the governor’s proposal would boost funding for most school districts in Nassau and Suffolk.

Nine districts would see modest declines in their total aid.

Dandan Zou and Michael R. Ebert report in NEWSDAY that state aid makes up about 30% of the total revenue for schools on Long Island, with the majority funded through local property taxes. School taxation makes up roughly two thirds of homeowners' tax bills.

Governor Hochul's plan calls for a minimum increase of 1% in Foundation Aid for all districts. Foundation Aid is the largest source of school revenue from the state and represents “new money,” compared with expense-based funding that comes in the form of reimbursements, said Bob Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.

Although the overall amount of Foundation Aid for the region would rise by 2.9% to nearly $4 billion under Hochul's budget plan, educators noted 73 of Long Island’s 121 districts would only see the minimum increase.

“This is an encouraging first step but there’s still work to be done,” Vecchio said of the governor’s...

As the developers of two offshore wind farms off Long Island argued in court this month to end Trump administration stop-work orders, their filings for the first time shed light on the cost to build the two massive arrays — a combined $13 billion.

In filings earlier this month, Sunrise Wind, which is scheduled to bring its 924 megawatts of power to Long Island at Smith Point in Shirley by late 2027, said it has “already spent or committed more than $7 billion on the project,” and that it would incur another $1 billion if the project were to be canceled.

Mark Harrington reports in NEWSDAY that last year Orsted issued special new stock to raise $9.4 billion, some $6.3 billion of which was earmarked for completion of Sunrise.

The stop-work order for Sunrise Wind remains in place, with a court hearing scheduled for Feb. 2. The stop-work order alone is costing Sunrise $1 million a day, the company said in its filings. All of Sunrise Wind's energy production is scheduled for the Long Island electric grid, where the company has said it can power some 600,000 homes -- about half of LIPA’s customer base.

Orsted argued that the “compounding impacts of delay” for the Sunrise project also risk the prospect of “project cancellation,” which would result in the project suffering “enterprise-level harm, including losses of more than $8 billion.” Orsted stock has been battered in recent years by losses and write-downs tied to offshore wind, including cancellation of two big New Jersey projects.

Separately, Empire Wind, the 810-megawatt project being built off Jones Beach, revealed in court papers that it had spent $4 billion to date on the project, which is more than 60% complete, and that it would spend another $2 billion to complete it this year. Empire, which last week got the go-ahead from a federal judge to resume work under a preliminary injunction, will bring all its energy to New York City’s grid by the end of this year and 2027.

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The 41st Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast drew a crowd of about 400 people to the Hyatt Regency Long Island in Hauppauge yesterday, to honor the life and legacy of the civil rights leader. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that Rev. Charles Coverdale, who conceived the event shortly after joining the First Baptist Church of Riverhead, was honored by the memorial breakfast committee with its Lifetime Achievement Award. The breakfast committee presented MLK Jr. Meritorious Awards to community healthcare advocate Vanessa Baird-Streeter, president and CEO of Health and Welfare Council of Long Island and affordable housing developer and advocate David Gallo, president/cofounder of Georgica Green Ventures. The committee also presented an MLK Jr. Special Recognition Award to Justice Fernando Camacho, acting Suffolk County Supreme Court justice and New York State Court of Claims judge. In remarks accepting his award, Coverdale, who has just retired as senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Riverhead, reflected on his journey from the South Bronx to Harvard to Riverhead. He said he was a city boy called to pastor a church in the country. Coverdale also looked back on the origins of the MLK memorial breakfast. In 1983, the year Coverdale came to Riverhead, Congress adopted legislation setting aside the third Monday in January to honor King’s birthday. Pastor Coverdale said he realized that there was no countywide event celebrating King’s life, so, working with members of his congregation, he started one. It quickly grew to be one of the premier MLK Day events in the region. The Rev. David L. Kelley II, senior pastor at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Brooklyn, was the keynote speaker at Monday’s event. Musical selections were performed by the Reverend Dr. Marti Luther King Jr. Freedom Choir. Guest speakers included Rep. Nick LaLota, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, and Suffolk County...

Young people under 25 are at increased risk of developing gambling problems compared with older adults, whose brains are fully mature. Mental health professionals and industry experts say this factor, combined with the 24/7 accessibility of mobile sports wagering apps, has made gambling addiction among Long Island's younger generations including teenagers a harmful and growing trend.

In response, at least one school district on Long Island has started educating graduating seniors about the dangers of gambling. Area universities are also taking proactive steps to provide outreach to students and some local education advocates are pushing gaming platforms to strengthen their safety checks, particularly for minors.

Lorena Mongelli reports in NEWSDAY that on the state level, Gov. Kathy Hochul recently unveiled a proposal to expand age verification requirements for gaming platforms and to strengthen privacy settings. The legal age to bet online is 18 for fantasy sports and 21 for sports wagering. Online casinos are not legal in New York.

While many gamblers are over 18, experts say they are also seeing underage players developing problematic betting habits.

In 2018, federal restrictions on sports betting were lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court. New York State in 2022 legalized online betting, which includes mobile sportsbooks and fantasy sports. Since then, online wagering has surged in popularity. Online bettors in New York wagered a record-breaking $26 billion in 2025, more than any other state.

But the increased appeal has come at a cost.

Local mental health professionals said their treatment offices are seeing more Gen Z patients struggling with gambling. Gambling recovery organizations on Long Island said they are also fielding more calls from people seeking help.

A spokesman for Gamblers Anonymous Long Island said the increase began around the time online betting was legalized. Last month, the local branch received double the number of calls compared with November, with people as young as 18 seeking help.

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A federal judge yesterday granted Empire Wind a preliminary injunction to allow the project off Long Island's South Shore to restart construction following a stop-work order by the Trump administration last month over unspecified national security concerns.

Mark Harrington reports in NEWSDAY that U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted the order Thursday morning, calling for an expedited summary judgment briefing schedule for the ongoing case by Jan. 20, according to court filings. The order from the Washington, D.C.-based federal court means the project, which is more than 60% complete, can go forward and avoid critical work deadlines that could have canceled it, developer Equinor of Norway said.

"Empire Wind will now focus on safely restarting construction activities that were halted during the suspension period," the company said in a statement yesterday. "In addition, the project will continue to engage with the U.S. government to ensure the safe, secure and responsible execution of its operations."

White House spokesman Taylor Rogers responded, “President [Donald] Trump has been clear: wind energy is the scam of the century," with Americans "forced to pay billions more for the least reliable source of energy." He said the administration "looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

Equinor has already spent $4 billion on the 810-megawatt project, which is 14 miles off the coast of Jones Beach and will bring all its energy to the New York City power grid late this year and next. The company plans to spend another $2 billion to complete the project this year.

Earlier this week, a Washington, D.C., district judge granted a similar injunction for a second offshore wind array impacted by the order, Revolution Wind off New England. Orders remain in place for three others, including Sunrise...

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, eyeing a reelection campaign later this year, used her annual State of the State address yesterday to take aim at two targets: affordability and the Trump administration. Yancey Roy reports in NEWSDAY that Hochul, a Democrat, proposed an array of initiatives she said could reduce everyday costs for New Yorkers: increasing aid for child care, speeding up housing development, lowering automobile and homeowner's insurance costs, reining in utility bills by increasing oversight and boosting aid to food pantries.

The governor also outlined measures to counter the Trump administration on several fronts: child care aid, vaccine standards, tax deductions and energy development. She proposed a new law related to federal immigration/deportation initiatives — it would create a right to sue federal officers for constitutional violations.

Hochul touted an improving New York economy and declining crime rates. But she also emphasized immediate challenges in making the state more affordable and "defending fundamental rights."

"Today, New York faces serious headwinds. Reckless federal actions are pushing up costs, threatening jobs and putting critical investments at risk," Hochul wrote in a booklet accompanying her speech. "Efforts to divide, exclude, and roll back hard-won rights are testing the values that have long defined our state. And too many families are still asking the same fundamental question: Can we afford to build our future here?"

Governor Hochul asserted that her agenda for the year will help.

"The 2026 State of the State agenda is grounded in a simple belief: Government should make life more affordable, keep people safe and expand opportunity — not shrink it."

Hochul will have to back up her proposals with a funding plan — which she is slated to present to the State Legislature next Tuesday. Her State of the State address set her thematic and aspirational goals for the legislative session, which runs until the beginning of June.

Amid the budget and lawmaking, Hochul also is trying to set a reelection course against the presumptive Republican nominee, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

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In late fall of 2025, new solar-powered traffic cameras began popping up along roadways throughout the North Fork, raising heated discussions on social media about how the cameras were being used. The Southold Town Police Department has released a bulletin explaining its use of the Flock Safety Camera automatic license plate readers, funded through a state law enforcement tech grant, which has enabled the Suffolk County Sheriff to greatly expand the use of these cameras throughout the county. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that the Southold Town Board agreed at its Dec. 16 meeting to put a public informational bulletin about the cameras on its website in response to residents’ questions about the purposes of the cameras and what data they are collecting. Chief Steven Grattan said the Town of Southold has used Flock ALPR cameras for about three years, and that both the original cameras and several of those recently installed were donated to the town by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. The town police department has also recently purchased its own cameras using a state Law Enforcement Technology (LETECH) grant, he said.

Last August, the Suffolk County Legislature approved increasing the number of county Flock Safety Cameras in areas that don’t require local or state legislative approval from 25 to 60 cameras, funded through a $542,500 LETECH grant from the state. Sixteen other cameras were planned to be installed along New York State rights-of-way, including along state Route 114 in Sag Harbor and East Hampton Village and along Route 25 in Riverhead and Southold.

Chief Grattan said cameras in Southold are monitored by town police dispatchers, who receive automatic alerts when the vehicles are...

This afternoon New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to announce plans to boost math instruction in her State of the State policy speech through guidance for school districts and increased professional learning opportunities for teachers. Keshia Clukey reports in NEWSDAY that the Democrat’s 2026 legislative agenda also is expected to address literacy, with a proposal to provide targeted resources to the state’s highest-need districts to help improve reading efficiency and allow teachers to access microcredentials in the science of reading at state and city universities at no cost, according to the agenda provided exclusively to Newsday ahead of the speech.

"My dream is for New York students to be the absolute best in the country academically — that’s why we’re making record investments in evidence-based learning models to get our kids up to speed in math and literacy," Hochul said in an emailed statement to NEWSDAY. The Governor’s speech today will lay out her legislative agenda for the year and is expected to focus largely on affordability — a rallying cry for both Democrats and Republicans heading into an election year. All 213 seats in the New York State Legislature are up for election. Hochul, who also is facing reelection, already has released plans to make child care more affordable, increase access to universal pre-kindergarten, lower auto insurance rates and eliminate the state tax on tips up to $25,000 a year.

She also has called for increasing social media and artificial intelligence protections for children, investing in peer-to-peer mental health training for teens, and preventing the building of homemade "3D guns."

Details on how Hochul plans to pay for her agenda and address a $4.2 billion budget gap for fiscal 2027, which begins April 1, will be released in her budget proposal next week.

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A Suffolk County judge has upheld the termination of Gadi Capela, the former longtime rabbi of Congregation Tifereth Israel, the historic Greenport synagogue. Joshua Needelman reports in NEWSDAY that the congregation voted to remove Capela, the rabbi since 2013, in September, following three days of voting. That came more than a month after Capela was removed "for cause," which was later changed to a suspension.

Capela filed a lawsuit in October, alleging he was illegally terminated and suffered "severe" reputational damage because of the firing, attorneys for him and several of his supporters said.

The lawsuit called for Capela to be reinstated as the congregation's "lawful rabbi."

Suffolk state Supreme Court Justice Christopher Modelewski wrote in his decision Friday that it would not be proper for the court to consider Capela's claims. He wrote that "American Courts are precluded from adjudicating disputes involving ecclesiastical governance."

"Even if this Court was possessed of sufficient knowledge and understanding of Judaism in order to discern whether Rabbi Capela violated any tenets of faith, the aforestated Constitutional prohibitions forbid this Court from uttering any such determinations," Modelewski wrote.

Modelewski did not rule on Capela's claim of defamation, and set a court date of Feb. 20 to discuss that claim.

Eighty-two congregants "in good standing" participated in the vote to determine Capela's employment, with 52.4% voting for his termination according to Sara Bloom, president of the temple's board, who calls Tifereth Israel, founded in 1892, the "synagogue of record on the North Fork."

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Peeko Oysters Founder Pete Stein will discuss “How Oysters Shape Our Shores” in a talk at the Cutchogue Civic Association’s monthly meeting this coming Thursday, Jan. 15 at 6 p.m. in the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Library 27550 Main Road in Cutchogue. He’ll discuss how oysters are grown in the Peconic Bay, why shellfish farming helps local waters, what daily life on an oyster farm looks...

New York education leaders and advocates are pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to overhaul the state’s decades-old school aid formula in her budget proposal this month — a formula that currently would cut funding for hundreds of districts if not for a safety net policy.

The complex formula, known as Foundation Aid, was enacted in 2007-08 and is the single largest source of financial support for public schools in the state, sending billions of dollars to Nassau and Suffolk counties alone.

Parts of the formula are regularly updated, but others are frozen and haven’t kept up with rising costs, education leaders and advocates told NEWSDAY. The calculation also doesn’t consider the state’s 2% cap on property taxes, which limits how much districts can raise locally.

Keshia Clukey reports in NEWSDAY that a safety net policy, known as "hold harmless" or "save harmless," ensures districts that otherwise would see cuts under Foundation Aid receive at least as much as they did the previous year. More and more districts are relying on the policy, due largely to declining enrollment and rising income and property wealth, which reduce the state aid districts are eligible for according to the Foundation Aid formula. This school year, more than 56%, or 378, of the state’s 673 school districts fall under "save harmless," according to data from the Association of School Business Officials of New York.

On Long Island, 67 of the 121 school districts are on "save harmless" — including 42 in Suffolk County.

"The higher that number goes, the greater the risk is that you really don’t have a functioning formula," said Robert Lowry, deputy director for the New York State Council of School Superintendents. "Fewer and fewer districts are actually on the formula and thereby dependent on getting some sort of minimum percentage increase."

The state budget for 2025-26 guaranteed at least a 2% increase in aid for all districts and maintained the "save harmless" policy, but neither is guaranteed this year.

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New York State’s plans for scores of battery-energy storage plants by 2030 face new headwinds this year after another fire at an upstate battery plant in December, Suffolk County’s rejection of a variance for a proposed plant in Holtsville and the federal government’s freeze on wind-energy arrays designed to feed the batteries. Mark Harrington reports in NEWSDAY that developers who had planned large battery plants for Long Island had already faced waves of opposition from most Long Island towns with moratoriums on construction of the plants, following fires at three plants in New York State in 2023. One of those, in East Hampton, has been back in operation since summer after a devastating 30-hour fire that required a near complete reconstruction.

Proponents of the batteries, which are part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan for a carbon-free grid by 2040, say battery-plant fires have been greatly reduced in recent years and new plants in the state are subject to strict new fire codes that went into effect this month. The codes mandate intense scrutiny of the plants’ designs, continuing inspections and faster emergency response plans.

The battery facilities planned for Long Island vary in size from less than an acre for a facility operating on Brookhaven Town land in Patchogue to more than six acres for the planned Holtsville plant. The plants feature row upon row of large storage containers, each filled with hundreds of thousands of AA-size lithium-ion batteries like those used in other electronic products. The batteries are used safely in countless rechargeable electronic products and utility storage systems, but improper use, poor design or damage can cause them to catch fire and, in the worst scenario, experience an extremely high temperature thermal runaway process that is exceedingly difficult to extinguish.

LIPA last year said it would defer to the state to...

The state will not be able to cover "hundreds of millions of dollars" in expenses for social services like child care, emergency housing and public assistance if a freeze imposed by the Trump administration is not lifted by the end of the month, a spokesperson for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office said yesterday. Lorena Mongelli reports in NEWSDAY that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that it was withholding $10 billion in child care and family assistance subsidies to five Democrat-led states, including New York, as it conducts a review amid claims of fraud. The move followed allegations of fraud at several child care centers in Minnesota.

At a virtual press conference Thursday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told reporters, “This funding freeze is leaving our most vulnerable families and child care providers in a devastating limbo, not knowing if or when they will lose the assistance that they rely on to send their children to day care and keep their businesses running."

NYS Attorney General Letitia James said in a release last night she is leading a coalition of four attorneys general in suing the Trump administration in the Southern District of New York, seeking a federal court order preventing the freeze and declaring it unlawful.

HHS has said it was pausing funds to three programs overseen by the agency's Administration for Children and Families: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund and the Social Services Block Grant.

New York uses more than $3.6 billion yearly to run these programs — $2.7 billion for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which serves more than 202,000 New Yorkers yearly; $832 million for the Child Care and Development Fund, which serves 170,000 children annually; and $93 million for the Social Services Block Grant, which serves 164,000 children and 52,000 vulnerable adults.

As part of its review of the Child Care and Development Fund, the government is asking for attendance documentation for "subsidized child care services," with personal information redacted, according to a letter sent to Hochul that was obtained by Newsday.

For the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Social Services Block Grant program, the government is requesting detailed administrative data such as recipients' names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth from at least 2022 to 2025. The deadline to submit this information is Jan. 20.

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The Remsenburg-Speonk School District has partnered with the Southampton Town Police Department to implement a new emergency alert system to improve communication between the district and Town Police during emergencies. Dan Stark reports on 27east.com that as part of the Centegix CrisisAlert system, teachers and faculty members at Remsenburg-Speonk Elementary School are given lanyards that hold a card with a button to press during emergences. Pressing the button three times will send an internal alert to the school’s security team. Doing so more than eight times will alert the police dispatch. As part of the system, messages are displayed on interactive displays, such as smartboards, in classrooms, including a red banner that reads “lockdown” in those scenarios, followed by instructions with safety protocols. In classrooms without smartboards, these instructions will come up on teachers’ laptops for them to relay to students. The district is currently working on replacing older smartboards in certain classrooms to ensure that each room can properly display the emergency messages.

Remsenburg-Speonk is the first school district in Southampton Town to utilize the system. Superintendent Denise Sullivan said that Town Police see the district as a “pilot” for other school districts in the town considering it. “What Remsenburg School is doing with its crisis alert system is cutting edge,” Southampton Town Police Chief...